Systems, Cognitive + Computational Neuroscience

Understanding how the brain’s information-processing capabilities interact through the nervous system to give rise to perception, thought, cognition, memory, and emotion

The human brain is the most complex system in the universe. Hopkins researchers engage in system-wide, computational approaches to understand how that system and its components give rise to cognitive processes.

Systems/cognitive neuroscience is the study of how information processing in this vast neural network gives rise to perception, memory, abstract thought, complex behavior, and consciousness itself. Johns Hopkins has an unusual concentration of systems/cognitive laboratories with a focus on quantitative, network level understanding of cognitive information processing.

One major area of interest is how visual and tactile information processing leads to perception and understanding of two- and three-dimensional objects. Another focus is on neural processing and recognition of speech and other complex sounds. Other laboratories study neural mechanisms of attention, memory formation, motor learning, decision making, and executive control of behavior.